THE GREEN FROGS

From a Korean folktale, the story of two frogs who always do the opposite of what their mother tells them. When it's time to wake up, they don't; when it's time to eat duckweed soup, they won't; when it's time to clean up, they make a mess; when it's time to be quiet, they start croaking. Their mother's dying wish is expressed carefully: So that she will be buried on the sunny side of the hill, she purposely asks her sons to bury her in the shade by the stream. Regretful of their past behavior, the sons obey her wish, which is why each time the stream threatens to flood her grave, they sit by the waters and weep. It's also why naughty children in Korea are called ``green frogs.'' Heo (Father's Rubber Shoes?, 1995) provides a gleefully fatalistic retelling, but the writing is surprisingly wooden. The magnificently eccentric illustrations, full of tortured proportions and twisted perspectives, depict three ungainly frogs surrounded by a bizarre variety of bugs, plants, wallpaper patterns, and little squiggles, all in an idiosyncratic palette of grimy green mixed with beige, pink, and blue. (Picture book/folklore. 4-7)